Job Application Sinks Padilla

It's been a busy day in Florida for the courts. The Miami Herald reports that Jose Padilla, one time Chicago gangbanger and recruit for bin Laden's crew, was convicted of conspiracy to murder and kidnap and providing material support to terrorists. The jury was out a day and a half, and also bagged were a couple other mutts whose names escape me.

I expect Mr. Padilla ought to get out a pad and pencil and start practicing spelling "Florence, Colorado 81226" because that's where he's likely to be for a while.

Apparently the big piece of evidence was Padilla's application to join al Qaida, which he filled out in Afghanistan and on which his prints were found.

Now. A lot of us do not agree with what our government is up to in its present iteration. We may not agree with our foreign policy or the way that the Bush and Chaney wrecking crew have wiped their boots on the constitution.

But none of that should be seen as an affirmation of the works of this traitor. Because when all's said and done, that's what he is, a practitioner of treason and a guy who was ready to sell out his country.

Sir Walter Scott had a way with words in The Lay of the Last Minstrel:

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!

If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored , and unsung.

Amen, brother.